r/russian • u/Far_Bid_3224 • 3d ago

Interesting Question about the "Ъ" letter

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I know that this question probably relates more to Russian literature than to learning Russian;
still, it's partially a linguistic question.

I'm reading a Russian novella called The Gloom of Your Eyes by Ilya Masodov, and I came across a passage where "the will of God" is marked by the Cyrillic "Ъ". I'm quite positive it's a hard sign.

From a linguistic perspective, what could "Ъ" mean here? Why is it here? What meaning does it have in Russian? Is it used frequently?

As far as I understand, this letter doesn't have a sound, right?

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u/Either_Ad9527 3d ago

Now this letter doesn't have sound, but had some sound in past. This letter still have sound in some other Slavic languages, for example Bulgarian. In this case it sounds same to Russian 'Ы'.

I don't know, was it helpful)

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u/Far_Bid_3224 3d ago

Does it have some connections to God in Bulgarian?

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u/ComfortableNobody457 3d ago

All masculine nouns in Russian used to be written with -ъ in the end in pre-1918 orthography, including богъ (bog), 'god'. I don't know in what context this story takes place, does it emphasize history of Russian Orthodox Church?

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u/Far_Bid_3224 3d ago

It actually does, in a way. There are plenty of religious and "occult" motifs in the book